The restaurant doubled as a bar. Posters of beer brands adorned its half-high walls, their upper sections covered with a netting that allowed me to, from the inside, see the streets intersecting at the junction where the restaurant stood. In my direct line of sight was the fence of the building that housed me as a child. The fence looked as I remembered: burnt orange, not too tall, broken bottles that glinted in points fastened to its top. Above the fence, a brown roof jutted. And beneath the roof was the top wall of the living room that used to be ours. It was in this living room that, at the age of nine, my sister began the dance.
Once, in our backyard, my sister and I stooped over a pile of plates. On the floor were two stainless basins. One contained soapy water with bubbles that glimmered in the morning light. The other held clear water reflecting the sky. As we washed the plates, my sister hummed “Ekonke”, a cultural Efik song, then rose to her feet, catching sunlight on her face, and danced Ekombi.
The dance started with the bending of her knees, her feet lifting gently and dropping, kicking softly back and forth. Then her hands and shoulders joined in, and her whole body moved like a current in a quiet stream. My mother stumbled into the scene and screamed. She ordered my sister to stop.
“What are you dancing?” she asked. “Do you know what you’re dancing?”
Ekombi’s origin was credited to the Calabar River goddess, Anansa, and dancing it, it was believed, invoked her spirit. My sister said she didn’t attempt to learn the dance. She just moved one day and found herself doing it correctly. After that, from time to time, the urge to dance Ekombi came. If you were Anansa’s chosen one, the stories said, the dance would come to you through no effort of yours. And this was what worried my mother: the thought of her daughter being under the influence of Anansa.
Back then, a superstitious method to confirm the otherworldliness of Anansa’s people was to back them—bend your head upside down, and look through the opening between your legs. If they were her chosen, their feet would float above the ground. This method, however, came with a caveat: anyone who attempted watching, if caught, would receive a spiritual slap on their cheek. The slap could induce a loss of hearing. And for fear of that, I never tried it on my sister.
Anansa often took men too, the stories said. Sometimes it happened in dreams and sometimes in the physical realm. If you crossed a river she ruled over and she liked you, she would upturn the boat to take you. Now and again, boats capsized on the Calabar River, and one person disappeared. Divers would rummage through the river, their long search bearing no fruit. And because a drowned body surfaces after some days, many would wait for the body to float. If this did not happen, then it would be certain Anansa had struck again. A priest would then be invited to solicit on the person’s behalf. Incantations would be made, as would sacrifices. And some days after the ritual, the person would surface, alive, their skin slippery and sometimes bloated. While sailing past the river, one was advised not to speak her name—if you called her, she would whisper back, and hearing her voice would pull you into the water to meet her.
She had taken me once in a dream, but the dream was not mine; it was that of my mother. In the dream, my mother and I were walking past a bridge. And on the bridge, a beautiful woman leaned against its rail. Her clothes were colourful and her jewellery glimmered in the sun. She turned to me and beckoned. I left my mother and approached her. As I neared the woman, she embraced me and her lower body became a fishtail, scales adorned it like glittery studs. My mother, who didn’t notice I had drifted off earlier, turned around and had a jolt of fright. I was relaxed in the mermaid’s arms, and my mother began to pray. She prayed and called down help from heaven. She called down help and invoked the blood of Jesus. And as she prayed, the ground beneath me and the woman opened and, into the body of water below, we fell.
My mother woke up crying.
Perhaps my mother’s dream was just a dream. Perhaps my sister’s urge to dance Ekombi was spurred on by her sheer love of dancing. But as a child, I wanted them to be more. I grew up watching cartoons that glorified mermaids. Learning there was one in my city with the power of a genie made me want to associate myself with her. The stories said those she chose, she often visited in their dreams, and whatever they demanded—money, clothes, jewellery, perfume—appeared beside them when they woke. So, after my mother shared her dream, I did not share her fear. Rather, I looked forward to meeting Anansa so the items on my wishlist would finally be mine.
To my disappointment, however, she never visited. And all my hopes of meeting her died when, in 2005, I left Calabar.
After my family moved out of Calabar, the nostalgia rush I felt each time I remembered the city crashed on me like a breaking wave, and despite how much I craved returning, that craving remained unsatisfied until 2018 when I visited to collect my First School Leaving Certificate from my primary school. I was in the city for a week. There were many people to reconnect with. I intended to visit our former house but couldn’t find the time. Four years later, in 2022, seeing my childhood home was one of my reason for returning to the city.
I arrived in the neighbourhood and strolled down the street. The stroll was partly out of curiosity to see the changes, see things that could stimulate memories, and partly out of cowardice. I had hoped to enter the compound and see its current appearance. But as I reached the street and walked in, I lost the courage. The red gate to the yard was ajar, revealing a slice of the flat opposite ours that belonged to a neighbour who was a photographer. I walked past the fence. Halfway into the street, I turned back.
Everyone who knew my family must have left. What if I walked in and became a suspicious character to the strangers who now lived there? What if seeing the compound ruined the way I remembered it? The street was already so different that it didn’t agree with the memory of it I carried so long. So, I strolled past the compound and entered the restaurant where I sat down, watching the building and reliving, in my head, the memories of old.
The woman who ran the restaurant approached me, pulling me out of my reverie. She asked what I needed. I placed my order and paid. When I finished, I booked a taxi to the Old Residency Building, the next place on my itinerary. Shortly after, the driver arrived, and we drove out of Asitata Street, out of IBB Way, to Ekpo Eyo Drive.
The Old Residency Building sat beside the Presidential Lodge, on high grounds from where one can see the Calabar River, its gentle shimmer sitting like a mirage in the distance. Outside the building, underneath a porch, a woman and two men sat, talking. I assumed they were museum staff, so I approached them and enquired. They demanded a fee. I paid and was assigned a tour guide.
Inside, our tour began with the history of trade between Calabar chiefs and European traders, dating as far back as the seventeenth century. In one photograph, a village chief and a white merchant stood opposite each other. Beside them, in the foreground, stood a weighing scale. Because trade by barter lacked balance, the scale was introduced to even trade, ensuring the items both parties exchanged were of equal weight. On the white man’s side of the scale was an assortment of items: gin, a mirror, a clock, a gun. On the chief’s side: bottles of palm oil. The men faced each other and shook hands. And while their right hands were locked in a business agreement, the white man’s left hand stealthy tipped his side of the scale, giving the unsuspecting chief the delusion of fair trade.
We moved past the colonial era, past the three seats of power of the Old Calabar Kingdom, past the figurines of royal women with elegant hairstyles, and down to a section where masked faces stood. The floorboards creaked underneath our weight as we walked. We walked past a two-faced masquerade, past the god of fertility with an outsized penis. And towards the end of the table, we met the figurine of a woman with her hands raised and spread apart, a python twisted around her torso, each end of the snake held in a palm.
This stands as a representation of Anansa, the Calabar River goddess, the tour guide said. Although this is not her exact image, he said. He then explained that a proper figurine of her was being made, but in order not to keep her space vacant, the figurine of Ala, an Igbo goddess, was used as a placeholder for Anansa. In the old days, he said, Anansa used to be worshipped by the Efik people who are the dominant tribe in Cross River State, but modernity and the rise of foreign religions have relegated her to a deity of the past.
The next section of the tour returned to things associated with colonial times. But I was still transfixed by Anansa’s story—of the naval ships of colonial officers she sank, of the rituals and renaming of the naval base after her to appease her wrath, of the long procession which brought together her crowd of worshippers as they performed rites and walked along the streets of Calabar in celebration. And I was delighted that, by chance, I was told about her right after I saw my childhood home where memories of my association with her began. I refused, however, to agree she had become a deity of the past. This disregard for traditional religions and their gods was common among Nigerians who practised colonial religions, such as Christianity. As I would later find out, there were still people who worshipped her, who believed in the generosity of wealth and grace she granted to those who pleased her, and in the wrath she poured on those who crossed her. For them, this deity will continue to continue.
We walked into a room trapped in the past—a preserved presentation of the dining room arrangement used by British officials who lived in the building. There was a piano, a grandfather clock, teacups, a kettle, a gramophone, and above the dining table, a dusty manual fan. A window to my left opened into a view that oversaw the Calabar River. Evening was upon us. The river held golden shimmers. Beyond it, a dense press of palm trees lined the horizon. The tour guide was still talking. Our tour was ending. And it was being wrapped up with, again, stories of colonialism. It occurred to me that in most Nigerian institutions where I learnt about places and their history, the heavy side of the information tilted towards colonial stories. In my elementary education, for instance, lessons on history were mostly a rundown of the transatlantic slave trade, the colonial times, and the military era coups post-independence—as if there was no civilization in the area worth teaching before the colonialists reached the shores of our region.
The tour came to an end. I left the museum building and walked out of its gate. Labourers littered the vicinity, trimming lush lawns that yawned in the soft glare of the fading sun. The smell of cut grass strangled the air. I walked into Hope Waddell Avenue and entered Millenium Park, where a couple sat. I moved past them and found a seat. In the distance, two ladies took photograph after photograph of themselves in different poses. Further away from them stood Eleven-Eleven Roundabout, the spot where, in times past, the procession for Anansa’s celebration ended. It was this procession that morphed into the Calabar Carnival, which became one of the biggest cultural street festivals in Africa.
Subtly, Anansa still influences the modern world.
Zenas Ubere is a Nigerian writer and editor. He was selected for Tender Photo’s 2024 editorial fellowship, LOATAD’s 2023 West African Writers Residency, and the SBMEN & Goethe Institut Art Writing and Criticism Workshop. He is the coordinator of Lolwe Academy.